3

After an early afternoon breakfast, I started walking out towards the lake. The tracking spell was primed and ready. The lake was a good distance away and the wendigoes’ lair was on the far side, so I hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. I wanted to wait until I was a lot closer before I started pumping energy into the necklace. On top of that, I was still in the “city” and I’m not much for following around a pendant in public—at best, it gets me weird looks, at worst, somebody will come along with a torch and a rope.

What I really needed was a new set of wheels, since otherwise I had one very long walk ahead of me. I stopped by an ATM, drew out my daily limit, then went with one of my better tricks. I figured I had earned a little good karma and it probably wouldn’t kill me to take out a line of credit on a luck spell. I closed my eyes and focused on the result I had in mind, me sitting behind the steering wheel. “Father, I could use a little luck here. Show me the way to go so that what you want can happen. Amen.” Not exactly high magic, I grant, but it had helped me before in the past. Luck magic is dangerous if you don’t invoke a greater being to govern it.

No voice thundered out of Heaven and no cars fell from the sky, so I started walking again. This kind of spell was subtle: no flash, no kaboom. It would work, though, provided I paid attention to whatever help Heaven offered. I had gone five blocks before a sign caught my eye: Redwind Drive. Not many street signs spell out words like avenue, boulevard, or drive. I took that as my sign and hooked a left on to Redwind Drive.

The road twisted off to the right through a slice of modern suburbia. The houses were nice, but not luxurious. A few people were out mowing their lawns, quite possibly for the last time until spring. A pair of kids were playing with a large dog, though I couldn’t quite make out who was chasing who. I wandered slowly forward, keeping my eyes open, without looking like a burglar casing a job. The street went on like this for fifteen minutes. I was starting to feel like I had missed something when I saw her.

An older man stood in his driveway, bent over the hood of a midnight blue 1964 Ford Mustang. From the way his elbow was pumping, he must have been polishing a blemish out of the wax. It couldn’t have been a very big flaw; she practically beamed in the afternoon sun. I strolled closer before calling out, “She’s beautiful, sir.”

The man turned and grinned, a gray mustache above his lip. “Thank you.” He looked around at the other yards. “At least, I assume you mean the car. Never know when one of those neighbor girls is going to get it in their head to sunbathe.”

“Even if there was a girl, she’d have to be quite a looker to compare to a first production year Mustang.”

He cocked his head, a hint of frustration creeping over him. “My nephew posted that ad? I told him I didn’t want to sell her that way. Internet, bah.”

I laughed, wondering just how much good karma I’d spent on this one. I looked up and down the street to make sure there were no buses heading my direction. “No, sir, no Internet, just a Ford man. She’s…well, I’m sure I’ve never seen one in such good shape.”

“Well, that she is. I always wanted one when I was young. Couldn’t afford her till I was well past the middle of the road. Probably for the best. How anyone survives to be older than twenty-one, I’ll never know. I would’ve wrapped her around a tree when I was a kid.”

I walked up the driveway to get a better look. “That would have been a shame…both for her and the tree. A car like that can give an oak a run for its money.”

“That’s true. She’s all-American steel.” He wiped his hands on the edge of the towel before extending his right hand. “Steve Daniels.”

We shook. “Colin Fisher.” If he wasn’t worried about giving me his name, I wasn’t worried, either. “Ad? You’re not thinking of selling her, are you?”

“I’m afraid so. My wife and I are moving. Costa Rica. Beautiful place, but not for her. They drive like maniacs down there…and tax you a fortune to import an American car.”

I started to reach out to pet her, then thought better of it. “You mind?”

He nodded. “Not at all.” His eyes stayed on me as I ran my hand along the edge of her frame. My nerves were electric at the connection. There was luck and then there was Luck. I did a double-check in the sky for any signs of falling asteroids.

“You sure you didn’t come about an ad?”

“I’m sure. I’m in the market, but…” I hesitated. “You’re not going to believe this, but I just prayed for help in finding a car.”

His eyes stayed hard on me, then relaxed. “That’s where you’re wrong. I think I do believe it. I’ve been asking God to show me the right person to sell her to. I can’t stand the thought of someone driving her who doesn’t love her the way I do. Do you need her, Mr. Fisher, or just want her?”

“Need. My Dorothy…I mean, my old car…was stolen.” I didn’t care for lying to the man, but, a believer in prayer or not, trashed by supernatural beasties was probably more than his belief, or his heart, could handle.

He nodded. “How much can you afford?”

“I’ve got five thousand on me. Whatever else you want, I can get when the banks open tomorrow.” It wasn’t a great car-buying strategy to issue a blank check, but I was in love. Dorothy was family, like an old aunt who could cuss and talk about new movies, but still knew how to bake cookies and make chicken soup. The Mustang was more like the head cheerleader in high school.

“Five thousand will be just fine. I’m not one to argue with God.” He pulled a leather keychain from his pocket. “You want to take her for a test drive first?”

I smiled and pulled out my wallet. “I’m not much for arguing with God, either. If you say she runs, that’s good enough for me.”

We spent another half-hour looking her over. Steve showed me what he had done and what he thought might need to be done next and when. We swapped car stories, signed the title over, and fawned over her. As I was getting ready to leave, he asked, “What are you going to call her?”

“What did you call her?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. She probably means something different to you than she did to me.”

I couldn’t very well call her Dorothy; not only was that name taken, it was too old for her. Never mind that this car was twenty-two years older than Dorothy, the Mustang was eternally young. That though made me think about the dog-eared paperback I had read while working at the renaissance fair in Georgia. I’m probably the geekiest man alive for reading science fiction while pretending to be a medieval court wizard, but the name from Heinlein’s book fit. “Dora. Adorable Dora.”